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17th out of 208 books
—
827 voters
Sundiver (The Uplift Saga #1)
by
David Brin (Goodreads Author)
No species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron--except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? Circling the sun, under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in history--a journey into the boiling inferno of the sun.
Paperback, 341 pages
Published
July 21st 2010
by Bantam Spectra
(first published 1980)
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Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.
On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.
While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a...more
On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.
While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a...more
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Most recent SF I read is actually a bit dated, David Brin's "Sundiver". I picked it up because it got a lot of favorable mention in "Eclipse Phase" (a transhuman SF roleplaying game I play tested). It's setting has humanity uplifting some other earth species (chimps, dolphins, etc...) to human sentience... and then humanity encountering aliens which derive their intergalactic status on whether a species has uplifted other species (has "client" species). It has a big debate among humans whether t...more
This book is about a galactic civilization where only ones species has ever traveled to the stars without being "uplifted," or genetically engineered by another more advanced species. The one that wasn't uplifted were the progenitors, the first race to make it to the stars. The galaxy has an interesting political make up, as each race is valued on who uplifted them and how many races they have uplifted. And then there are the humans, who seem to have reached the stars without being uplifted. And...more
Apr 18, 2013
Dark-Draco
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-fiction-series,
favorites
The first of the 'Uplift' novels, the rest of which I'll definitly be trying to find. This is a excellent SF story with loads of great ideas to mull over.
Humans have made contact with many alien species, but they are unique in that they haven't been 'uplifted' by a superior patron race. Have they really developed intelligence on their own, or have their patrons just deserted them? Against this unstable political background, the Sundiver project is making ready to dive into the outer layers of th...more
Humans have made contact with many alien species, but they are unique in that they haven't been 'uplifted' by a superior patron race. Have they really developed intelligence on their own, or have their patrons just deserted them? Against this unstable political background, the Sundiver project is making ready to dive into the outer layers of th...more
David Brin's Sundiver is the first of a six-book shared-world series in his Uplift universe. From what I gather, the first three books, Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War form a very loose trilogy--loose in the sense that all three books are supposed to be stand-alone entities yet all share the same universe.
Sundiver is, at its core, a mystery novel with science-fiction elements, set in a very engaging and deep universe. The central mystery involves a human and extraterrestrial exped...more
Sundiver is, at its core, a mystery novel with science-fiction elements, set in a very engaging and deep universe. The central mystery involves a human and extraterrestrial exped...more
1 like · like · see review
I'm always trepidatious when I return to a book I loved as a child. My friend Jon Orwant once confessed that he had avoided rereading "Godel, Escher, Bach" in case it wasn't as good through 2000s eyes as it was through 1980s eyes. For me, I remember curling up in bed and devouring Brin's Uplift Saga as a teen, and coming away with my mind blown. So you can imagine the hesitation I felt when I opened "Sundiver" on the iPad and started the first sentence.
Fortunately, it has barely suffered in the...more
Fortunately, it has barely suffered in the...more
I've already bought all six books in this series, so I'm going to read them all. This first one, though, didn't thrill me much for a number of reasons. For one thing, it featured a superhero type protagonist and another superhero type for a love interest. I seem to prefer books in which it's ordinary people who do the things that turn out to be extraordinary, just by doing what they feel. It's also a mystery with a lot of plot twists, and those are not my favorite type of book.
The technology was...more
The technology was...more
3 likes · like · see review
Sep 18, 2010
Lisa (Harmonybites)
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Science Fiction Fans
Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List
This is the first book in the The Uplift War series. It took me a while to get into this book. The characters, particularly the protagonist and main point of view character, Jacob Demwa, are likeable. I liked his love interest, Helene De Silva, too. But I can't say Brin's characters strike me as complex or memorable. The style is readable, but hardly smooth. Brin is notably far too fond of the exclamation point among other clunkers.
Two things rather won me over though and made this novel stick...more
Two things rather won me over though and made this novel stick...more
An interesting introduction to the Uplift universe. There were a lot of good ideas that I trust will be explored further in the rest of the series. In contrast with the works of Arthur C. Clarke [Rendezvous with Rama, 2001], where alien races are sparse and maybe even extinct, in Brin’s universe there are all kinds of aliens are many of them are tetchy. And it’s all very feudal, with many races owing their position to being “uplifted” by patron species. Mankind is an interesting anomaly, seeming...more
This is one of those books I suspect I should hold off reviewing in order to do so in context of its sequels. Despite that, there are two things I would like to go ahead and note.
1) Despite being set in the future, I will agree with some others that there is something "dated" about the book. Perhaps it's just the rather simplistic drawing of the Sundiver's layout that just looks so 1970s to me (the book was published in 1980). However, there's also an anti-establishment feel to the story that I...more
1) Despite being set in the future, I will agree with some others that there is something "dated" about the book. Perhaps it's just the rather simplistic drawing of the Sundiver's layout that just looks so 1970s to me (the book was published in 1980). However, there's also an anti-establishment feel to the story that I...more
Mystery in space!
Clues!
Motivations!
Characters!
OK, that's a crappy review. Let's try again. Well, not entirely again. Don't forget about those things I said before, they are totally relevant.
SO. I really liked this book. I don't think it was necessarily the best written book ever - there were some odd stylistic tics - like Culla's monologue at the end explaining what he had done... the main character had some kind of internal episode during it and we, as readers, missed the entire thing. You get...more
Clues!
Motivations!
Characters!
OK, that's a crappy review. Let's try again. Well, not entirely again. Don't forget about those things I said before, they are totally relevant.
SO. I really liked this book. I don't think it was necessarily the best written book ever - there were some odd stylistic tics - like Culla's monologue at the end explaining what he had done... the main character had some kind of internal episode during it and we, as readers, missed the entire thing. You get...more
After reading Existence, I decided to go back and read The Uplift books as so frequently recommended to me in the past.
I enjoyed Sundiver, but it certainly feels rough coming on the heels of Brin's most recent, 3+ decades later...which was expected of course. The human characters tend to be predictable stereotypes which gets tired at points (did the strong female lead really just fall trembling into our hero's arms?) and the murder mystery format entertained less that the science...though I sup...more
I enjoyed Sundiver, but it certainly feels rough coming on the heels of Brin's most recent, 3+ decades later...which was expected of course. The human characters tend to be predictable stereotypes which gets tired at points (did the strong female lead really just fall trembling into our hero's arms?) and the murder mystery format entertained less that the science...though I sup...more
David Brin is a genius... this novel, thirty something years old now, really feels thirty something. Like many science fiction stories of the past, and even many hard science fiction stories, there is a lot going on here in regards to the human mind, hypnosis, psychic powers - lots of things that were commonplace in even some very hard sci fi novels of the 60's and 70's.
And I don't typically enjoy them, they often raise more questions than they answer, and in this case, well, I don't know.... t...more
And I don't typically enjoy them, they often raise more questions than they answer, and in this case, well, I don't know.... t...more
The first half of this book is a bit slow and plodding, which I chock up to Brin's hard sci-fi style and his preoccupation with ideas over characters. But like many good concept-based SF, the real story of Sundiver is a straight-up mystery tale with an alluring, near-schizophrenic lead detective and his irascible, sexy love interest. Sundiver reads like the conjunction of high space opera and a textbook on the composition of the sun. It's a pleasurable enough read, and I would be interested in r...more
This book is the first in a series, however there were numerous references to a prior adventure by the protagonist, Jacob, in which he saved the Vanilla Needle in Ecuador and inadvertently caused the death of his wife. Jacob has the ability to enter trances that seem to give him special abilities and he is haunted by a powerful alter-ego, perhaps an AI, that he refers to as Mr. Hyde. When we first meet Jacob he is training a dolphin to use a flying whale suit, but it soon becomes clear that his...more
I got rid of all my David Brin novels because he was, I felt at the time, racist against aliens.
Bear with me here.
Aliens are always the villains in the Uplift novels. And the thing is, they're Big Bads, they're Snidely Whiplashes: evil maniacs out to destroy humanity. If it weren't for the cartoonishness of their villainy, I think the Uplift books would be classics. Merely having a couple of "good ones" doesn't suffice. Besides, this does a disservice to the human characters, who by default are...more
Bear with me here.
Aliens are always the villains in the Uplift novels. And the thing is, they're Big Bads, they're Snidely Whiplashes: evil maniacs out to destroy humanity. If it weren't for the cartoonishness of their villainy, I think the Uplift books would be classics. Merely having a couple of "good ones" doesn't suffice. Besides, this does a disservice to the human characters, who by default are...more
Ich bin hin und her gerissen. Sonnentaucher bringt genau die richtige Portion Sense of Wonder mit. Dass Brin hier an einer wirklich großen und großartigen Welt feilt, ist deutlich zu spüren. Dennoch: Der erste Uplift-Band bleibt irgendwie provinziell.
Das wäre nicht weiter schlimm, wenn die Menschheit und die Gesellschaft auf der Erde etwas vielschichtiger und vor allem detaillierter ausgefallen wäre.
Für meinen Geschmack bleiben zu viele Fragen zu Politik und Sozialem offen, dafür wird umso mehr...more
Like others here I had heard very positive feedback on Brin's Uplift saga so I picked Sundiver up in a bookshop in Hay (not realising that I'd had it on my shelf for years in the 90s but took it and others to Oxfam when I moved in with my partner). I wish I'd read it at the time, I had a more voracious appetite for this kind of science fiction in those days and I have a feeling that age hasn't been particularly kind. The concept is great and I love the setting but Sundiver definitely feels like...more
Jan 21, 2010
Mark
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People who enjoy space opera sci-fi
Recommended to Mark by:
Hugo Award nominee
I really disliked this book. This may have been due in part that I listened to the audible edition and I'm not a fan of George Wilson as a narrator.
The protagonist in this book, Jacob, is tedious and unbelievable. The author builds him up as a world-weary, zen, super scientist, martial-artist with a Mr. Hyde-like split personality that he needs keep in check.
Al the other characters in this book are diminutive to Jacob.
The women in the novel are little better than 2-dimensional window dressing....more
The protagonist in this book, Jacob, is tedious and unbelievable. The author builds him up as a world-weary, zen, super scientist, martial-artist with a Mr. Hyde-like split personality that he needs keep in check.
Al the other characters in this book are diminutive to Jacob.
The women in the novel are little better than 2-dimensional window dressing....more
The Uplift books are tied for my favorite sci-fi series with Asimov's original Foundation series. This is sci-fi at its very best. Brin goes through an astonishing number of fascinating ideas and concepts, but leaves them for the reader to peruse or discard. Want racial allegory? Sure. Prefer religion? Plenty of it. Political intrigue? It's there by the truckload.
When Brin goes into pretend-science he goes all in. One can almost sense his smirk going through this first book: that's right, this b...more
When Brin goes into pretend-science he goes all in. One can almost sense his smirk going through this first book: that's right, this b...more
I'm sort of glad this is over. Not that it wasn't fun. It was. But maybe it could have been just a bit more fun. I know I risk being stoned as a Probationer for even saying it, but at times 'Sundiver' was, well, not quite as dramatic as I would have wished from a sci-fi outing with spaceships and suns on the cover. (I ALWAYS judge my sci-fi by the cover.) This was by no means the case with the climax, however, which was tremendously exciting, but it was the case here and there along the way. Stu...more
An intriguing WhoDunnIt sent on Mercury and a research vessel dropping into the sun. The Galactic society is interesting and seems realistic, though humans being Special Snowflakes isn't the most creative thing ever. And I really wish the book had come to some sort of conclusion re: where humans Uplifted or did we evolve in isolation.
At first, Jacob Alvarez reminded me of Dirk Pitt, until his background became more and more fleshed out and the "Mr. Hyde" personality revealed itself and then reas...more
At first, Jacob Alvarez reminded me of Dirk Pitt, until his background became more and more fleshed out and the "Mr. Hyde" personality revealed itself and then reas...more
I could not get into the characters or the story of this book. At about 60 pages I gave up on it. This is the first in a series of 3 books so somebody must enjoy it.
It is an interesting premise in that an advanced civilization or species can "uplift" another species into sentience. In the far future Earth humans have "uplifted" dolphins and chimpanzees to an almost equal plane. They communicate and think on the human level. There are dolphin and chimpanzee scientists and engineers, etc. At this...more
It is an interesting premise in that an advanced civilization or species can "uplift" another species into sentience. In the far future Earth humans have "uplifted" dolphins and chimpanzees to an almost equal plane. They communicate and think on the human level. There are dolphin and chimpanzee scientists and engineers, etc. At this...more
Mar 08, 2011
Merredith
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
mystery and sci fi lovers
Shelves:
4-or-5-stars,
sci-fi
Sundiver is the first book in the Uplift Saga. Years ago, in highschool or college, i'd read one or two books from this series, near the end. Loved it. I always love Brin's work. It's taken me this long to begin at the beginning & read the whole thing. I was surprised to find out, this book is more of a whodunnit. Although they're on a ship that dives into the sun, looking at new life forms, it's also a closed room parlor murder story, so you've got the integration of a new and old form of s...more
One of my favorite sub genres of science fiction is the type where scientists are investigating new forms of life. This book is about an expedition to investigate the life that lives in our own sun.
But, to make things more interesting, it is also a murder mystery. There are also strange life forms, political discussions, conspiracies, alien technology, unexpected alien "super powers", and characters with multiple personalities. There is even an alien that looks like broccoli. How cool is that?
I...more
But, to make things more interesting, it is also a murder mystery. There are also strange life forms, political discussions, conspiracies, alien technology, unexpected alien "super powers", and characters with multiple personalities. There is even an alien that looks like broccoli. How cool is that?
I...more
An expedition composed of humans and aliens travels to the Sun to solve the mystery of the enigmatic beings who live there. The concept of Uplift, in which races achieve sentience via genetic manipulation by more advanced species, is very interesting, but it is pushed too far into the background here. I was also disappointed by the resolution of the mystery, which made the scope of the story much more narrow and trivial than it could have been. There were also some plot elements, such as the mai...more
So obviously David Brin's first novel, though this series would go on to win multiple awards. Many intensely interesting underlying concepts in this book, but a main plot that is convoluted, dialogue that is ridiculous, and written in a style made me laugh out loud more than once at its juvenile execution. Oddly, the underlying structures of galactic society (and even the "whale dream") are so intensely interesting in this world that this mediocre (at best) novel is probably still compelling eno...more
It's an interesting story, for sure, and the universe Brin created is fascinating—definitely worthy of a continued series. My main frustration with this book is the suddenness with which the solutions to the mystery are revealed. Whereas other authors help readers piece things together as they go, Brin takes us along for the action and mystery, only revealing the key detail that solves the mystery after the case is cracked. I rather prefer being given the chance to figure things out along with t...more
The ship swooped through the turbulent chromospheric crosswinds, tacking on the plasma forces by subtle shifts in its own magnetic shields ... sailing with sheets made of almost corporeal mathematics. Lightning fast furling and thickening of those shields of force -- allowing the tug of the conflicting eddies to be felt in one direction and not another -- helped to cut down the buffeting dealt out by the storm.
Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolera...more
Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolera...more
Awesome multi-species science fiction, with ancient galaxy-spanning empires and scrappy Earthlings trying to hold their own. One of the few series with ultra-high technology that still has a hard sci-fi feel.
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David Brin is a scientist, speaker, and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends...more
More about David Brin...
Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends...more
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